A friend had bought a HP dv7 Pavilion, which came with a licensed Windows 7 and its own utility software. It had an option to make a recovery disk which, of course, is quite useful.

Now the problem was that the recovery disk required somewhere around 16GB and which required 4 DVDs. DVD's aren't that portable, are unreliable and a pain to back-up.

So I wanted to a software using which I could emulate a DVD writer and an empty writable DVD so the recovery disk creator would write to.

I tried many different programs, (don't remember the names) but none had this particular feature.

What software should I be using to emulate this?

  • I don't think I understand the question here... Why don't you just use a USB drive? – Seth Feb 9 '14 at 1:15
  • The recovery disk creator strictly wants a DVD. Doesn't take USB drive as an option. – Bleeding Fingers Feb 9 '14 at 9:35
  • Pretty sure Alcohol 120 does it – DVK Feb 9 '14 at 23:04
  • @DVK I don't think so. I had tried it. – Bleeding Fingers Feb 10 '14 at 9:57

I just wanted to do the exact same thing (writing a recovery disk to an image file instead of a physical DVD), and looked for a software, and I found one for free which did the job without a problem:

BTW I have no connection to the company, but I highly recommend this software, because it was very easy to use and did the job.

Here's a short description which I found first:


After installing, you have to wait until the "KernSafe SCSI Controller" driver really gets installed (otherwise you can not mount a new device; BTW I covered installing other drivers on the picture which do not belong to this software):

KernSafe SCSI Controller gets installed

After running TotalMounter, you have to select Mount > Virtual CD/DVD RW:

Mount Virtual CD/DVD RW

In the "Mount Device" window, select DVD, type in an appropriate size:

Mount Device

Device gets mounted:

Device gets mounted

Select the appropriate device in the recovery management software:

Select the appropriate device

And the writing process was successful for me:

Writing process was successful

After the writing process, I simply clicked on the device in TotalMounter and unmounted it (there's an Unmount button). (The final result was an iso file with a size of 8.87 GB.)

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Virtual CD v10 is quite a good package, with a decent list of features that's not confined to just CD emulation. Virtual CD also allows you to emulate CD/DVD/BD burners, allowing you to burn disks virtually to image files.

You can check out the Trial version of Virtual CD (30 days trial) for your purpose. This can do the job for you, without the need of shelling out any money.

But, if you are willing to buy Virtual CD for US$ 34.95, it will be a nice tool to have in hand. Though its been quite some time since I last used it, it seems to be quite the same powerful tool it was; set at a decent price tag.

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Here is another english user guide of Kernsafe TotalMounter for ref. of those interested. http://www.edugeek.net/forums/downloads/94233-totalmounter-free-virtual-cd-dvd-rw-writer-windows.html

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  • Could you expand the answer to explain how the proposed software satisfies the OP? – Alejandro Mar 22 at 17:39

If you are willing to pay a sum to get the job done, you can go for Phantom Burner. Phantom Burner costs US$ 29.95.

It can help you to emulate CD-R/DVD+RW/DVD-RAM/BD-RE drives, thus helping you to burn disks to image files; virtually from any application that demands a physically writable drive.

The software also has a trial version. But, its functionality might be a bit too limited, and might not suit your need, as its limits are 50 MB for CD's and 1.4 GB for DVD's. So, in case you are not willing to buy the application, it might not be of use to you.

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